


we'll be alright in the end

by sohappily (somuchitshurting)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Cats, Character Death, Depression, M/M, title eventually lives up to its name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 17:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1148829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somuchitshurting/pseuds/sohappily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After weeks of failing to move on, Harry finally decides to adopt a cat to keep him company. The kitten’s reminiscent personality turns out to be more than he bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we'll be alright in the end

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](http://otpprompts.tumblr.com/post/50947729898/person-a-of-your-otp-is-depressed-and-after) post and my love for cats.

“Harry.” The atmosphere is tense, awkward, palpably nervous. “You alright, mate? C’mon, get up. We got to keep moving.” Liam practically tears off his arm trying to get him to stand up.

“No. Leave me alone.”

“Harry, please, the procession is going to start soon. You need to get into your car.”

“I refuse.”

“ _Harry._ ” Liam is patient and kind but also firm and demanding. More than Harry truly deserves. “This is a tough day for all of us, I know. We all love him, you especially, and it’s hard to see him go. But right now, we’re going to go honor him. And you need to be strong, because you’ve always been a pillar of strength to those around you. His sisters look up to you, y’know. They’ll need you to be strong for them. It’s hard for them, too.”

And Harry just sighs because he knows Liam is right – he’s always right. So he unwillingly picks himself up off the bench.

“There we go.” Liam wraps an arm around Harry’s waist and tentatively pushes back a stray strand of Harry’s hair behind his ear. “He always loved your curls,” he tells no one in particular.

Getting into the coach is difficult and buckling up is difficult and waiting for the car to move is difficult and driving around the town is difficult. Harry’s eyes dart around, desperate for something to look at. There are fans outside sobbing uncontrollably, and Jay is in the seat in front of him holding a shaky tissue, and there are four pairs of puffy eyes to his right all crammed together so that they  could fit into one car with Harry and their mother. Everywhere he turns there is sadness, so he resorts to staring at his shoes, but even then there is pain because his feet have never seemed so lonely before.

“He always loved your shoes,” Liam’s voice mimics in his mind.

It’s hell getting to the cemetery, but once they’re there, things go smoothly enough. People shuffle forward and are seated underneath a blue pavilion where he’ll be given a proper burial. Harry finds his seat up on the front row, marked by a brazen sign with _Harry Styles_ written in gigantic, curvy letters.

Off in the distance, near the trees somewhere, a girl’s voice wails distraughtly, and a security guard rushes over. “This is a private funeral!” he yells. A couple of people sitting behind Harry shush him.

Liam finds his seat next to Harry’s, and Zayn comes trailing in a bit after. They both look sullen and depressed, but it’s not until Niall comes that Harry has to close his eyes and bite his lip. He’s never seen that boy stop smiling. Until now.

Harry doesn’t open his eyes until he feels a hand placed gingerly on his thigh, and he sees a halfhearted smile from Jay. “You look smashing today, love,” she murmurs. She says nothing more.

Some official looking man walks up to the front of the group and starts rambling off words of imparting wisdom, but to Harry’s ears, they’re all just lies meant to cheer up the naïve. His sentences start to slur together, and Harry can feel himself spacing out of consciousness. A flash from some clandestine paparazzi’s camera works everyone into a flurry, and Jay cries out, “Do you know no boundaries?” That’s the only part Harry can remember clearly of the man’s speech.

When he stops talking, Jay and other members of his immediate family stand up and pluck a rose from a vase to place on top of his coffin. Lottie is the last member to rise and hesitantly steps forward. When she picks up the rose, she turns around to Harry and holds it out. He shouldn’t be up there, only family members, but the way Lottie looks at him tells him he cannot say no, so he manages his way up there and delicately takes the flower from her shaking hand. He can’t think proper; he’s just going through the motions like a hollow corpse. His mind doesn’t register the soft petals sitting on top of the casket, and he can’t remember when he sat back down. He only recalls standing up there for a while, just staring at the bleak, polished wood.

And then they’re lowering him down in the ground, and someone starts a prayer, and in that moment, Harry is lost, searching for a way out, for anybody to pop out and yell, “Surprise! This is all a joke!” But no one comes, and they cover up the tomb with a large slab of marble, and people get up and shuffle out one by one until finally, it is just Harry sitting alone surrounded by the empty, white chairs.

The soft rattle of a car’s engine tells Harry that they will wait on him while he has his peace, so he stares out at the endless horizon and the spiraling green trees and wishes to God that he was the one in the coffin and not sitting here. But fate is cruel.

After an eternity passes, he decides that there is no use in moping here while people are waiting for him, so he gives the desolate rock one final stare before heading out.

_Louis William Tomlinson_ is engraved in his mind.

* * *

 

It has been five weeks since the funeral, and Harry is depressed.

Every day, he curls up in his bed and tries to sleep away the pain, and when he cannot, he spends his time staring at walls or fiddling with his hands. And every day, his mum knocks on the door with a croon of, “Harry, darling? Please tell me you’ve eaten today. You’ve hardly had anything lately.” And when he gives her no response, she sighs back with, “At least drink something.”

He’s just not hungry. Food tastes so bland without someone to share it with.

Harry had insisted that she needn’t dote over him and that it was unnecessary for her to drive up every day just to make sure that he had eaten. “I’m fine, mum, honestly,” he had mumbled.

“If I don’t check on you, then who will?” she retorted. With a pause, she added, “I just want to make sure you aren’t going to do anything drastic. Like Lou—”

But before she could finish his name, Harry had slammed the door shut, and he heard the uneven clamor of footsteps going downstairs.

Harry makes the mistake of checking Twitter once.

 

There are hundreds more just like those, and he is sick to his stomach. He turns off his computer and vows never to check it again.

He gets a call from someone at least twice a day. Just various people, usually one of the boys or a family member. Sometimes it’ll be a celebrity he used to hang out with, whether they truly thought of him as a friend or not. He never picks up, and he immediately deletes any voice mails.

He’s just… so _tired_ of people. Nothing they say is going to change anything. Their meaningless words can’t bring him back from the dead. They’re worthless to him.

When he showers, he tries to sing, he really does, but the words get caught in his throat, and he gives up. They tried to put the band back together. Nothing was right. They were missing two voices.

The press has labeled Harry’s mysterious absence as a “brief hiatus from his career.” But they ensure that he will be back soon before the year is up. They don’t understand that they’re the real reason for this hiatus. If they hadn’t published so many lies, told so many stories, passed around so many rumors…

Harry refuses to let himself think that way.

He often finds himself walking around aimlessly in his kitchen looking for a beverage to quench his parched mouth. He longs desperately for some wine, but his mother has banned all alcohol for fear Harry will make the same mistake. So he makes the next best thing: coffee. As black and bitter and unforgiving as life itself. He doesn’t even like coffee is the funny thing. But he drinks it down because it’s the only realistic drink; juice is too sweet, water too innocent, and tea too peaceful.

It’s the only thing he’s willing to consume.

Harry likes to think that it’s an accomplishment when he goes a day without tearing up. It proves he’s strong, somehow. That he is in control of his emotions. But he’ll walk by a picture, a piece of furniture, trigger just the slightest memory, and everything will come crashing down again. He wakes up sometimes on the floor with a little puddle next to him, and with the dignity that he has left, he mops it up.

Some days the other boys come over, and they understand that Harry wants to be left alone, so they just sit on his couch watching meaningless programs, hoping that Harry will come downstairs to join them. He doesn’t.

One day Zayn gets fed up with him, and the world is dark and scary.

“You aren’t the only one who misses him!” he screams at Harry’s locked bedroom door. “But we’ve all managed to get over it!”

“ _Zayn!_ ” Liam chastises, and something slams on the door.

“Come out, you coward!” he shrieks. Another slam. “If you really loved him, you’d be out here enjoying life, not wallowing in self-pity! He didn’t die for you to feel sorry for yourself!”

Harry hears a conglomeratic mess of Liam’s criticizing voice, and then things go silent.

“Mate,” Zayn mumbles. “Please, come out.”

“You can’t get better by yourself,” a timid Niall squeaks.

“We’ll be here for you, Harry,” Liam finishes.

But their words mean nothing, _nothing._ They don’t understand what he’s going through. They didn’t lose what Harry lost.

And then one day, everything changes. There’s a knock at his bedroom door, and Liam calls out, “Harry? Look, we know that you despise everything now or something, and we respect you and your decisions. But we’re worried about you, and if you don’t care about yourself, then care for us. Come shopping with us today. Just one time. To humor us.”

Harry ponders over the decision for a while, and he hears the slump of three bodies sitting down outside his room.

“We’ll be here waitin’ for ya!” Niall yells.

And realizing that saying no would be futile, Harry forces every muscle in his body to get up and slouch over to open his door. When he opens it, he is attacked in a loving embrace by his closest friends and is pelted with shouts of, “I’ve missed you!” and “I’m so glad you’re alright!” and “My God, you look terrible.”

They rush over to his closet and pick out an outfit because Harry has literally worn the same thing for over a week now, and it is starting to show. They make him choose a headband to wrap up his massive mane because he hasn’t had a proper haircut in five weeks. They scrounge around his room for various amounts of tangible money and are about to leave when Niall notices the large pile of food that Harry’s been hoarding.

“You haven’t eaten _any_ of it?” he gasps.

“My mum…” Harry starts off helplessly, but Niall has already absconded with half the stack.

“I’ll be back later for the rest of it,” he guarantees, and Liam and Zayn just roll their eyes.

When they leave his flat, Harry winces in pain at how harsh the sunlight is. He’s pretty sure that London has never been this sunny before.

The four of them wander around browsing at all the eclectic shops and stopping in at a couple of them, but Harry comes up empty handed. He simply doesn’t want anything.

When the boys have decided that they’ve done a fair bit of shopping, they stop for some sandwiches, and Niall eats Harry’s portion.

“Please eat something,” Liam sighs.

“You sound like my mum,” Harry mumbles back.

They walk around for a bit more after that before realizing that they’ve almost returned back to Harry’s flat and he’s bought absolutely nothing.

“I got outside, isn’t that enough?” he protests when the boys insist that he go purchase something.

Liam is hesitant to say something before he notices a shop with a large paw print sign hanging outside. “I have an idea,” he grins. He grabs Harry by the hand and leads him over to the shop. In the window are four fluffy puppies snuggled together in an afternoon nap, and Harry’s face instantly softens.

“Come on, then,” Zayn declares. “Let’s go in.”

When they enter, Niall wanders straight to where the bunnies are kept, and Zayn finds his way in front of some assorted reptiles. Liam lets out a small laugh.

“Harry, why don’t you adopt a pet? It’ll keep you company. Since you hate people now.” He gives Harry’s ribs a playful jab.

“I don’t know,” Harry murmurs. “I don’t think I can take good care of it.”

“We can help you.” Liam puts on a slight pout. “I would feel better just knowing that you had some sort of company.”

They walk around the pet store looking at the cages. “No dogs,” Harry mutters. “Too energetic.”

Liam nods. “Or fish. They aren’t exciting in the least.”

Niall comes up to them at one point holding a surprisingly fat ferret while babbling, “Oh, please, Liam, can we please keep him?”

“ _No,_ you’ll kill that poor creature in under a week.”

“But… But, _Lee-yum_!”

Harry almost gets a chuckle out of Niall’s innocence, but he is stopped short by a tiny _meow_ off to his right. He slightly turns his head over in that direction, and suddenly, he is in front of a cage, peering in.

A kitten with short chestnut hair and piercing blue eyes stares back up at him.

“I want you,” Harry finds himself saying.

He’s never felt this excited in weeks, and he’s eagerly waving over an attendant to assist him. She halts in front of the cage and gives Harry a strange look.

“Are you sure this is the cat you want?” she asks suspiciously.

“Yes, yes.”

“Have you read any of his description?” She points a pink painted nail towards a sign on his crate.

“It doesn’t matter,” Harry says hurriedly. “This is the one for me.”

The attendant gives him one last look. “I’ll get a box for you to take him home with,” she says and all but scurries away.

Harry kneels down face to face with the kitten. “Hello, little guy,” he coos.

The kitten gives a huge yawn and stretches out a paw. Then he swipes Harry across the face.

Harry lets out a loud curse word, and is attacked by a fierce glare from a nearby parent. Liam and Zayn rush over to where he is and are instantly taken over by the cuteness of the cat.

“Oh, look at him!” Liam gushes. “What a pretty kitty.”

“Yeah, and nice to boot,” Zayn laughs. He turns towards Harry and flicks at his nose. “You got a little something here, mate.”

If looks could kill, Zayn would be lying on the floor in a heartbeat.

“Is this the cat for you?” Liam asks. He points towards the sign. “Says here that this cat doesn’t play nicely with humans and hates other pets. He’s also very mischievous and scratches up everything he gets his paws on.” Liam frowns. “This little fellow’s been in this shelter for quite a while now. Three years? I guess people just keep bringing him back.”

“Then he’s definitely the one,” Harry insists. He furrows his brows. “But I thought he was a kitten. He’s really small to be a grown up cat.”

The brown cat mews indignantly as if it could understand what Harry was saying.

“S-sorry,” he apologizes. The cat merely glares at him.

The attendant finally comes back with a cardboard box and scoops the cat out of his cage. “Would you like to hold him for a bit?” she winces and holds the cat up for Harry to see. He picks up the cat by his scruffy neck and places the little kitty paws in his big hands.

“You’re a tiny guy!” he says in a baby voice, much to the cat’s dismay. He brandishes his small fangs and lets out a squeaky _hissss_.

“Alright, I’ll put you in your box,” Harry says quickly before the cat can get even angrier at him.

He takes the cat over to the counter and fills some adoption papers while the other boys flit around getting necessary cat supplies. He finds a paper with the cat’s name – Elroy – on it before scribbling it out and putting a different name down. It was heat of the moment, really, but he was a sentimental guy.

The lady picks up the piece of paper by its corner like it is a piece of rubbish and says, “Its name is…?”

“His name is Boobear!” he blurts out.

She chuckles weakly. “A-alright then.”

A small hiss from the cardboard box suggests that Boobear did not like his name either.

Harry pays his fees, and his friends insist that they pay for the cat supplies, and Liam refuses to let Niall adopt a chinchilla, and finally they are on their way back to Harry’s flat.

He places the box down on the entryway floor and opens up the lid. “You’re free, Boobear,” he says.

The cat leaps out of the box, takes a hesitant glance around the room, and then immediately scurries off to hide under Harry’s sofa.

He sighs. “Guess it’ll take a bit of time for him to warm up to me.”

Liam pats him lovingly on the knee. “Don’t worry, mate. Cats love you.”

There is an indignant _mrrp_ from underneath the couch, and the boys all get a good laugh at it. Then they all sit in awkward silence, no one wanting to start up a new conversation.

“Thanks for today,” Harry finally says. “I needed that.” He frowns. “I’m tired now.”

The three of them give him a light squeeze on the shoulder, and Niall gives him a big hug, and they shuffle out of his flat. “If you need us, call us!” Liam shouts as he exits.

And then the door shuts, and Harry is alone again, and he is not hungry, and he is stuck with a cat named Boobear, and the name itself is enough to bring Harry rolling on the floor sobbing violently.

“I’m _such_ an idiot!” he moans and falls flat on his face. He tries to call out for something, anything, but the only words on his tongue are _Louis, Louis, Louis._ “I need you,” he whimpers.

He shuts his eyes, takes in a deep breath, tries to control himself. His head starts to throb from the pain of hitting the floor, but he pushes through it. If he can just suffer through this one attack –

Something cold and slimy presses itself on his cheek, and it takes all of Harry’s will for him not to shriek like a little girl.

“What the _hell_?”

He blinks once. Twice. A third time for good measure.

Boobear sits down on his tiny kitty haunches and peers up into Harry’s puffy green eyes.

_Meow._

“D-damn you, cat,” Harry hisses. “Gave me a heart attack.”

The feline begins to purr as if it was pleased with the events that had transpired. He cocks his head to one side as if to say, _it was my pleasure._

The cuteness is overwhelming. Harry sniffles and scratches underneath Boobear’s neck. His finger is the size of his tiny head, and the cat cranes his neck around to fully utilize its length.

“You’re not too bad of a cat,” he coos. As if he is unable to take a compliment, Boobear scampers off back underneath his resting place underneath the couch.

Harry doesn’t see him for the rest of the day, even when he shakes the box of cat food and puts fresh litter into a box in his kitchen’s corner. “G’night,” he yells into his empty flat, hoping for some sort of playful _mew_. When he gets no response, he trudges up the stairs and plops down on his bed, worn out from the day’s events.

A week passes, and the adoption has not had the desired effect on Harry that his friends had hoped for. He is as depressed and sullen as before.

His mum is delightfully surprised at the new member of the family, and she yells at Harry’s door, “Since when have you owned this kitty cat?” Next thing he knows, he’s being scolded at for not feeding him properly because the cat’s just skin and bones, but he can’t help it if the cat was born that way. He allows his mother to take over caring for the cat because she doesn’t trust Harry’s judgment in how to raise a living creature if he can’t even take care of himself. He hates to admit that he’s grateful; owning the cat is stressful.

One morning when he saunters downstairs for a bitter cup of coffee, he notices that his nicely upholstered couch is freshly scratched up by a pair of kitty claws. After ambling around snarling at the cat but unable to find his exact location, Harry gives up. Boobear wins this time. And Harry just wants to drink away the morning in peace.

A couple of times his friends come over and they mainly keep to themselves and the cat. Harry keeps himself locked up in his room.

“I think your cat hates everything,” Niall yells at the ceiling. “He’s scratched me, like, forty times.”

“He doesn’t hate me,” Zayn replies back. Harry can imagine the petite cat snuggled up in Zayn’s powerful arms, and he gets this terrible sinking feeling that the cat will never warm up to him like he does to Zayn.

“Okay, your cat hates everything except overly stuck up vain people,” Niall pouts.

Harry can almost feel Zayn’s shoulders shrugging.

“Have you even hung out properly with your cat?” Liam raises a good question. Harry’s only seen glimpses of Boobear when he’s downstairs, and the cat stays away from the stairs like the plague. Maybe he really does hate everything except Zayn.

After another fruitless conversation with Harry, his friends grudgingly leave, but not before Zayn shouts that if Harry won’t take good care of Boobear then he will. Harry rolls his eyes and sighs because he wants to please his friends, he really does, but taking care of a cat takes effort that Harry doesn’t want to put in, and it takes twice the effort with an animal that despises him.

One day Harry gets tired of the scenery of his bedroom so he goes downstairs and sits at the kitchen table with his cup of coffee and decides to stare at some walls. A daunting sea of grey splashes over everything, and Harry’s environment is dull, dull, dull. He’s taking a small sip when a teeny blob of fur jumps up on the table and causes Harry to nearly spill his drink.

“Oi!” he cries heatedly. “What was that for?”

Boobear snaps his head to glower at Harry and then falls over lazily in a puddle of wrinkly fur. He stretches out a lazy paw and begins to lick himself.

Harry groans. What a drama queen. He hesitates before reaching out a hand, and he gently strokes the cat’s fluffy ears. Boobear whips around his head to avoid Harry’s touch with a look that says, _just what do you think you are doing_ , and scowls at his ignorance in touching such a fine specimen.

“You’re so rude,” Harry huffs. He retracts his hand and goes back to drinking his coffee while Boobear continues his bath. They sit like that for a while until the furry devil decides it’s time for a catnap, and he curls up into a snug little ball smack dab in the middle of his table. It’s not long until there’s a rhythmic puff of air coming from the cat’s nostrils, and Harry feels himself almost crack a smile.

Boobear’s so peaceful when he sleeps.

Harry decides to make it a daily ritual to come down in his kitchen and sit at the table, and he’s satisfied with having a plan for each day. It’s a major accomplishment to get anything achieved nowadays, especially a routine. Boobear picks up quickly on Harry’s new schedule. His ears perk up at the sound of Harry’s chair squeaking on the wooden floor, and he scampers over and jumps up on the table. He’s made himself a little nest in the middle, and a disgustingly large pile of cat hair is starting to accumulate there. He still refuses to let Harry touch him, but Harry can sense that the cat is just as alone as he is.

One morning, Harry tries to have a heart to heart with the cat.

“Why do you dislike people so much?” he questions. Boobear’s tail twitches in response. “You don’t have to hate me. I’m a nice guy.”

Boobear yawns.

“Is it because you don’t have any cat friends with you? Did you have a family before or something?”

Blink, blink.

“I can get you a nice lady cat if you want some company.”

The cat cannot possibly look more enthralled.

“Look, Boobear, I’m sorry for whatever has happened to you in the past. You must have had some difficulties in those three years you spent at your shelter, and you must have given up a lot of nice owners. But the things that you loved in the past that are gone now don’t have to weigh you down. They aren’t gone forever. They exist here.”

And Harry sticks a gangly finger right up to Boobear’s fuzzy heart, and he recoils at the touch. Harry gets a slight frown on his face and tells himself that he’s not mad, just disappointed at the cat’s actions. Boobear begins washing furiously at the spot where Harry touched him as if that one poke messed up the intricate patchwork of his fur.

When two months have officially passed since the funeral, Harry brings down a special surprise for Boobear.

“This is who you’re named after,” he says, passing the battered photograph towards the cat. He gives it a cautious sniff before deeming it worthy of being in his presence.

 

“His name is Louis. Sometimes I like to call him Boobear.” The cat’s tail flicks at that.

Harry bites his lip and gives the cat a sad smile. “This is my absolute favorite picture of all time. He just looks so _fantastic_ in it. I keep it at my bedside at all times. Except now, of course.”

It’s taking all he can not to well up at the sight of the picture, it’s so _hard_ to talk about it out loud, and he’s so desperate for the approval from this miniature cat.

“You remind me of him, y’know.” Silence. “Maybe that’s why it’s been so hard for me to understand you. I’ve been so busy trying to compare you with past Boobear.”

Harry has to look down here because staring at the cat is bringing back too many memories, and he’s just now realizing that the shade of blue of the cat’s eyes are much too similar to an old flame’s pair.

“But you’re not him,” he sighs. “You’re just a cat.”

Harry takes a big gulp of his coffee. He just wants to go back to sleep, do nothing, make the pain go away.

“He passed away about two months ago,” he mumbles. “I miss him. I miss him so much.”

Harry looks up to see the cat’s reaction, but he has the same stoic face as usual.

His own features start to contort into something awful, and he’s unable to keep it in any longer.

“The public used to say the worst things about him,” he blubbers out. “They wrote so many rotten things. Like how he was addicted to drugs or that he was a blaring racist or that he slept with everything he got his hands on. And they wrote so many lies about him and me. We couldn’t go public with our relationship – there was no way the world was ready for it. But every article kept saying the same disgusting rubbish over and over again about his bloody relationship with Eleanor and how they were going to get married, or how he was a dirty cheater and shouldn’t be allowed to date anybody.” His stomach churns. “It was sick.”

It’s hard to go on, but the words begin to spill out of his mouth. “He started drinking. More than he normally did. I’d come home some days and he’d be passed out on the floor, a bottle in his hand and five more on the counter. He got real scary those days. I kept telling him, ‘Lou, you can’t do this to yourself, you’re going to hurt yourself,’ but he kept drinking and drinking. ‘Don’t pay attention to what they say about you.’ And he would smile this fake, hollow smirk and say, ‘It’s too late now.’ And he’d crush the bottle with a grip of his hands, and the glass would shatter everywhere, and his hand would start to bleed, so I’d wrap it up nice and tight so it wouldn’t spill any more blood, but the damage was already done.”

The next part gets caught in Harry’s throat, and Boobear looks up expectantly, patiently waiting for the rest of the story. “H-he got real angry one evening,” he chokes out. “Yelled about going for a drive or something, and he took a bottle with him for the road. I waited for hours for him to get home. He still hadn’t come back, and I was getting worried, so I started off for this place he always goes to when he needs to cool off some steam, but when I was driving there…”

Harry can’t go on.

_Meow._

“T-there was an accident. Four-car pile-up. Smoke everywhere. Emergency vehicles blaring. Lots of chaos. And I saw… _and I saw..._ ”

Harry digs his nails into his cheek and tries to focus the pain on something, _anything_ else.

“His car was there. In the middle. Of the pile.” He bites his lip and stares up at the ceiling. “And I remember thinking…”

He shuts his eyes.

“Oh, God, why did it have to be us?”

The tears start gushing out like a rampant waterfall, and Harry tucks his knees under his arms and convulses with every gasp, every struggle for a breath of air.

“ _They did this to him_!” he screams. “They killed him! They killed Louis! The _fucking_ media!”

And all the pent up anger and misery within surges out, and Harry becomes a madman, shrieking and screeching at everything. He takes the vase sitting on his kitchen counter and pitches it down, shattering it everywhere. He flings open his cabinet and takes every plate, bowl, and mug and knocks them down with one fell swoop of his arm. A shower of broken glass and pottery crashes down on the floor, and Harry sobs and falls on his knees, the cracked shards slicing at his exposed legs.

“It’s all their _damn_ fault,” he whimpers. And he puts his face in his hands to turn away from the world, the harsh reality, the bitter truth. A sea of white fragmented shards surrounds him.

All is silent.

Except for a little, tiny cat stepping gracefully around the broken pieces. Boobear dodges the shards with ease and makes a wee _pitter patter_ noise with his paws. When he reaches Harry on the inside of the hurricane, he puts his feet on his fallen knees to leverage himself up and meet with Harry’s bloodshot eyes. He takes a small sniff at Harry’s face and begins to lick away the tears.

“You _bloody_ cat.”

He wraps his lanky arms around the cat’s miniature body and cuddles him closely. The cat snuggles into Harry’s face and lets out a small _mew._ Cat whiskers are tickly.

Harry pulls the cat back to give him a proper look in the eyes, and Boobear lazily blinks back. “Do you still hate me?” he whispers.

The cat nuzzles his head onto Harry’s thumb and lets out a big yawn. Before he knows it, Harry is smiling. A real, genuine smile. One he hasn’t felt since Louis was alive. He pats the tiny cat on the head.

“Oh, Boobear,” he says softly. “We’ll be alright in the end.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave me a message on my [tumblr](http://muddithemudkip.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


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